That prompted Singapore's law minister, K Shanmugam, to dismiss the listing as "quite absurd and divorced from reality", insisting to a group of visiting American lawyers that Singapore is not "a repressive state" and does not "unfairly target the press".

He added: "Our approach on press reporting is simple: the press can criticise us, our policies. We do not seek to condemn that."

The hypocrisy of that statement was exposed a day later when freelance reporter Ben Bland became the latest journalist to be barred from working in Singapore.

He spent a year in the city-state contributing to publications such as The Economist, Daily Telegraph and the British Medical Journal. But his application to renew his work visa was rejected without explanation or right of appeal.

He writes: "As well as forcing out foreign correspondents, destroying the careers of local journalists and maintaining ownership over all the domestic newspapers and news broadcasters, the Singapore government is fond of using its stringent libel laws to further restrict the freedom of the press."

He points out that by the frequent use of stringent libel laws international news organisations have been silenced by the Singapore government.

"The real victims of this repression are not foreign correspondents like myself, who can re-locate, or large news organisations such as Dow Jones, which can afford to bear the costs of an occasional libel suit, but Singaporeans."